Although pain is the most commonly problem faced in medical practice, it receives relatively little attention in the education of health care providers. In an effort to help improve pain treatment while reducing the prescription pain medication epidemic, the NIH Pain Consortium, in an effort led by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), created an initiative to increase pain education in medical, nursing, pharmacy and dental schools across the nation. The plan included support of Pain Champions at health care schools, who were people in these institutions who already realized the need to increase pain education, and could, with support from the NIH Pain Consortium, increase pain education in their institutions.